Never Let Me Go
by Stephane Richer
Summary: And it's peaceful in the deep cathedral where you cannot breathe


Never Let Me Go

Disclaimer: I don't own Tite Kubo's _Bleach_ or Florence and the Machine's "Never Let Me Go".

* * *

Her perfume lingers in the air, delicate and almost not there, the way she is. Was. He wakes up and sometimes he smells her, the sweet flowers and honey, reaches out his hand to the other side of the bed, and expects her warm form, expects his touch to wake her, cause her thin hand to reach up and cover his.

But it's just a pillow beside him, cold and unmoving, and the scent in the air is the automated coffee pot's mediocre morning brew. It's always too watery. His hands are shaking; he needs a cigarette.

He steps onto the balcony, feet bare even though it's snowing out. The white flakes float down, blanketing the noise of traffic and the city outside. It's white, like quincy death. How fitting, as he lights the tip of his white cigarette with his white lighter (he doesn't believe in luck, thank you very much) and it takes a few tries to get it to spark but it finally does. The smoke drifts into the snow and wind and merges, like they were never two separate entities in the first place.

* * *

The phone rings and there's no one on the other line. It's been happening a lot lately, ever since…

He wonders if it's her, if her spirit is restless, but it's something he would have found out by now. He'd see her if she was still there, he knows. Why wouldn't she choose to haunt him?

Still, he wonders. Has she been attached to Uryu? His father would take care of her, but Soken has always had a soft spot for the boy and if he wants his mother he will not be denied this. After all, Soken could not give his own son a loving mother. Has she become lost? Has she not followed closely? But she has—had—always been meticulous.

Why does he hope it's her? Does he want to have to kill her a second time, eradicate her soul?

* * *

He smells tea when he comes home, a familiar scent. She'd always have his favourite brand of sencha brewing after a long day.

The kitchen is empty; the burners are turned off. The teapot is clean, in its usual place on the shelf.

The living room is dark and quiet. He puts on the radio, listens to jazz and reads the newspaper. Above the top of the page, he can see her head, bent in attention to the embroidery. A smile ghosts over his face; he lowers the paper and realizes it was just a trick of the light. The chair across from him is still empty, without even a dent in the seat where someone would have sat.

* * *

On his lunch break, there's a hollow wreaking havoc. He can't let it get near to the hospital and the patients, as much as he's sworn off his heritage. He lets loose an arrow, then another, then a rain of arrows, even after the hollow is already disintegrating. He's forgotten what it's like to just let loose.

Then, he realizes he might be seen and retreats back to the grey halls that smell of disinfected artificial borders between this world and the next, tinged with blood (always the blood. She had not bled, just…)

He fills out paperwork and loses track of time. The moon rises, casting an eerie glow in through the window. The overhead light bulbs are growing dim. They need to be replaced if the moon competes with them.

Tonight, no one calls. The phone remains as silent as his voice.

* * *

Winter becomes spring. He does not shiver when he goes outside on the balcony to smoke in the morning. His breath is not frosty. The plum trees are crying, shedding their pale petals everywhere, covering the sidewalk and blowing into his face.

In the wind, he can almost hear her say his name, softly, like she did when trying to comfort him, when she was unsure. It's worse when he walks to work (though it's warm enough to do that), because he's exposed to more winds and the absolute wind tunnel that is one street between him and the hospital.

He turns around, but there's never anyone there, only a crow sitting on the tree branch or a cat sunning itself on someone's porch.

* * *

The house is so stuffy that he's got the windows all the way open by March, something that he hasn't done since he was a child. He doesn't have to think about anyone else's feelings, a particular someone else's sensitivity to temperature. He wakes up and the breeze blows an indent in the gap between his elbow and his waist and it feels like an arm before he realizes she would never let the house get this cold.

Before he realizes that she's dead and buried and her soul is far away.

* * *

He closes his eyes when he cuts his hair, knowing how foolish it is, but not being able to see his hands and the scissors makes it easier for him to feel another hand on top of his, guiding him to the hard-to-reach spots (he knows it by heart now) in the back center. His eyes open and the slightly blurry mirror shows his face (no glasses) and the white tile bathroom wall behind it.

Again, he closes his eyes. But there is no hand on the scissors but his own.

* * *

The phone rings. It's the medical supply company. The hospital hasn't received a single call with no one on the other end since winter. It's late August now; the days are getting noticeably shorter.

His bedroom windows are still cranked all the way open. The room smells unmistakably like smog and grilled meat now. Every morning he wakes up hungry and sprawled out, undignified, over both sides of the bed.

* * *

He stoops in front of her grave, eyes closed.

He doesn't know what to say. She won't hear it, anyway.

_I love you. I'm sorry. I'm managing without you._ But is he really?


End file.
